1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of uniform resource identifier (URI) bookmarking and more particularly to the management of URI bookmarks in a network enabled content browser.
2. Description of the Related Art
Content browsing refers to the retrieval and presentation of electronic content in a browser client. Content generally can include electronic documents, audio, audiovisual and video materials and imagery. Most commonly, content can be stored in a server environment and published for access by content consumers over a computer communications network such as the global Internet. Content consumers, in turn, can retrieve content over the network by reference to a network address for the content. Once retrieved, the content can be presented in a browser client including not only conventional visual browsers such as the venerable Web browser, but also in alternative browsers such as those deployed in pervasive devices and those supporting different modes of presentation such as the audible presentation of material.
Content published for consumption often can be retrieved according to a URI. As defined by the World Wide Web consortium, a URI is “the way you identify a point of content in the Internet space”. A common way to identify a point of content in Internet space is through an addressing scheme including a protocol identifier such as “http”, a physical server address such as “xyz.com”, a file system address such as “root/sub-level” and a file name such as “myfile.txt” such that the combined URI appears as:                http://xyz.com/root/sub-level/myfile.txtreferring to the electronic document “myfile.txt”. For most conventional Web browsers, all content from the Web page down to the included graphics resources can be associated with and retrieved through a respective URI.        
Given the vast amount of content published for accessibility over the Internet, modern content browsers provide a mechanism for ably retrieving previously accessed content. Known as a “bookmark” or “favorite” (collectively referred to as a bookmark), end users can record content of interest as a bookmark. Subsequently, end users can access a list of bookmarks in order to recall the content of interest without being compelled to recall from memory the precise URI for the content of interest.
Of course, the skilled artisan will recognize that the URI for content of interest can change from time to time as the location of content changes, or as the storage platform storing the content changes address. For example, in the Web browser context, when an end user selects a bookmark for a URI that has become out of date, a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) return code in the 300, 400 or 500 range can be returned indicating a potential problem with the URI. Because bookmark lists can become overpopulated with dozens of bookmarks, however, ensuring correct URIs for each bookmark can become a management nightmare for the end user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,981,210 to Peters et al. for Self-Maintaining Web Browser Bookmarks, a patent application that has been commonly assigned to the assignee of the present patent application, partially addresses the problem of bookmark management in that a method for automatically updating bookmarks stored by a Web browser is provided when the bookmarked uniform resource locator (URL) is invalid and a redirect to an alternate URL is specified. In Peters et al., a Web page author places redirect markups in the markup associated with a particular URL. When the redirect markup is received by the Web browser, the user of the browser is given the option of replacing the existing bookmarked original URL with the redirect URL. Thus, Peters et al. at least addresses the maintenance of bookmarks in response to a redirect of a request for content.